Chronicle of a Security Leak

By GEORGE J. CHURCH

How the Stealth plane lost its cloak of invisibility

The argument will rage on until Election Day: Did the Carter Administration cynically leak military secrets to help the President win re-election ? Or was it only releasing heartening defense news that was rapidly becoming public anyway? And more important, was the national security really damaged by disclosure that the U.S. is developing a Stealth bomber that may be able to elude Soviet radar? Although still incomplete, the reconstruction of how the news came out makes a fascinating--and disturbing--tale.

For an extremely sensitive project, Stealth was talked about amazingly early, and often. A former official of an aerospace company reports that he heard as early as 1962 about a project to develop a plane that would be nearly invisible to radar. Stories about the aircraft began appearing in such technical journals as Defense Daily and Aerospace Daily as early as 1975. The Stealth project was not even stamped classified until 1977 by Defense Secretary Harold Brown; items continued to appear after that year. In 1979 a novel called Poseidon's Shadow described the use of an oddly shaped U.S. spy plane named Stealth F in a confrontation against the Soviets. Author Allen Paul Kobryn says he got the idea from stories in Aviation Week and the New York Times.

Still, up until early August, the details of the project were as shadowy as the plane was meant to be on a radar screen. All that was generally known was that the U.S. was working on some sort of radar-foiling aircraft, although aspects of the program had been quietly incorporated into the design of the operational SR-71 reconnaissance plane and the cruise missile. Then someone began leaking news on Stealth. Within five days, Aviation Week, ABC-TV and the Washington Post reported on the project. On Aug. 14, Post Reporter George C. Wilson wrote that President Carter was about to commit himself to the development of a bomber "virtually invisible to enemy radar" and that it might help him counter Republican charges that he had neglected U.S. defenses. Actually, Carter has not gone that far, but the Administration is seriously considering recommending the development of a bomber using the Stealth technology.

The story horrified military commanders. General Richard H. Ellis, chief of the Strategic Air Command, whose men would fly the Stealth, telegraphed the Pentagon that the story "brought the hair up on the back of my neck." He urged his superiors to "discredit" the story.

The Pentagon did the exact opposite. It told Benjamin F. Schemmer, owner and editor of the widely respected Armed Forces Journal, that he could now publish a detailed story about Stealth that he had been sitting on for two years at the Government's request. Indeed, William J. Perry, Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, briefed Schemmer with additional information.

Then Perry talked to members of the Senate Armed Services Committee and the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee about Stealth. He told the Senators that the Pentagon had heard that Armed Forces Journal would soon carry an in-depth article on Stealth. That was disingenuous, since Perry knew perfectly well the story would appear the next day, Aug. 21, and would disclose that the U.S. had been test-flying "virtually invisible aircraft" for two years. Perry then asked the Senators, both Democratic and Republican, to make a joint statement calling for a press conference to announce Stealth to the public and, in the interests of national security, set limits on what could be disclosed.

The Senators declined to give the Pentagon that reason for calling a press conference. Said Texas Republican John Tower: "That was a brand-new concept, that you limit the damage of leaks by confirming them."

As Perry well knew, the Defense Secretary had already scheduled a press conference on Stealth two days later. The timing had been carefully worked out by Brown's press officer, Thomas Ross, to precede--and take some of the sting out of--release of a report about what had gone wrong with the aborted April mission to rescue the hostages in Iran.

Before TV camera crews and about 100 reporters, Brown confirmed that the U.S. had indeed test-flown a plane that was hard for radar to detect, said that it "cannot be successfully intercepted with existing air defense systems" and boasted that the development "alters the military balance" in favor of the U.S.--even though a fully operational Stealth bomber could not fly until 1987 at the earliest.

That did it. Reagan charged that the Administration had deliberately leaked "some of the most highly secret weapons information since the Manhattan Project" (which developed the atomic bomb), in order to make Carter look supervigilant on defense matters. Carter called the charge "cheap politics." He recalled, correctly, that it was his Administration that had classified the Stealth program in the first place, and claimed, very inaccurately, that the Administration had "been successful for three years in keeping the entire system secret." But he left most of the burden of replying to Brown.

Brown's defense for going public was that he had no choice. Once widely publicized leaks about Stealth began appearing, he argued, it made sense to disclose as much as he could in order to create a "firebreak" that would contain further public discussion. To deny the story, as SAC Commander Ellis urged, would be wrong, Brown later told a House subcommittee probing the affair: "As the nation learned to its bitter regret in the Watergate era, a policy of deceiving the public undermines the basic link of trust between the Government and the people."

True enough, but Brown made a mistake by trumpeting Stealth at a press extravaganza instead of merely handing out a release. "I'm not surprised that it caused a storm," he now says. "I guess I am surprised at the size." The storm blew up, understandably, because Brown seemed to be citing Stealth as an example of the Administration's military prowess--an act with obvious, overt political overtones. Still, Brown flatly denies that he acted to help Carter politically.

As for the advance briefing of Schemmer, the Pentagon contends that it was only doing a favor to a journalist: since a press conference had already been scheduled to break the news of Stealth to the world, officials wanted a newsman who had loyally suppressed his information at their request to be first, rather than last, with the full story. That explanation satisfied many journalists--but not Schemmer himself, who told the House sub-committee that he considered it "a leak for political reasons."

Did the Stealth disclosures damage national security, and how much? The answers are not easy to pin down. Certainly the Soviets, who are devoted readers of U.S. technical journals, knew that the U.S. had a radar-eluding plane under development, and enough is known about the basic technology of foiling radar to enable them to figure out roughly how it would work and even when it might be operational. It is hardly a secret that Congress has ordered the Administration to have a new manned bomber ready by 1987. Even so, a number of Democrats as well as Republicans fear that Brown's disclosures have helped the Soviets. "Previously, they were just guessing," says New York Congressman Samuel Stratton, a Carter supporter who chaired the sub-committee that looked into the affair.

Who was behind the August leaks that Brown contends forced him to go public on Stealth? Republicans charge that with or without Brown's knowledge, the White House let out enough information to justify calling a press conference to brag about Stealth--and indeed the sudden burst of stories suggests a coordinated selling campaign. Some Washington journalists and Congressmen suspect the National Security Council was the source. The Administration denies that the leaks came from the NSC or the White House, and Carter has even ordered a Justice Department investigation.

Administration officials realistically point out that what remained of the Stealth secret could not have been kept much longer. The project has reached a stage that would require major funding in the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1, 1981. The Government would have had to brief many in Congress on the project early next year, and at that point the leaks surely would have become a flood. So at most the Soviets have gained a six-month start on crash development of countermeasures. Given the many years needed to perfect new techniques of warfare, that seems a marginal advantage. But given the stakes, it appears unwise for the Administration to have handed the U.S.S.R. even a tiny edge--and to have given the appearance of playing politics with the nation's defense.

--By George J. Church. Reported by Richard Hornik and Don Sider/Washington

With reporting by Richard Hornik, Don Sider

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